Don’t take away protections for climate and workers

Activists, workers and human rights defenders around the world have for years demanded laws to regulate big corporations. Finally, in 2024 the European Union (EU) passed the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) with safeguards for preventing and addressing human rights and environmental abuses in global supply chains. Now, before the law can even come into effect, the European Commission is pushing changes that effectively dismantle this crucial law. We are joining with people all around Europe to say – protect the CSDDD and stop deregulation. 

Our MEPs will vote in October on whether to slash the CSDDD in the name of “competitiveness” or protect people and planet. 

People across Europe are coming together to demand that our MEPs vote no to this Omnibus and to any future deregulation that cuts laws in place to protect human rights, workers’ rights and the planet. 

What can we do? 

What is the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and why does it matter?

The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) is EU legislation imposing human rights and environmental due diligence obligations on very large companies in the EU. ​  

The CSDDD requires companies to adopt and put into effect climate transition plans to limit global warming (in line with the Paris agreement to limit global warming to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels).    

1. Cutting CSDDD = cutting climate commitments 

Climate change is doing irreversible harm to people and our planet. The major culprits, fossil fuel corporations and the world's super-rich, are accumulating huge profits and great fortunes while ordinary people bear the devastating consequences. We cannot tackle climate change without action from the EU’s largest companies. We need laws to regulate companies. 

CSDDD was a step forward because it obliges companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions with a climate transition plan. Companies have to “adopt and put into effect a transition plan for climate change mitigation.” 

If our MEPs vote yes to Omnibus, these climate plans would become voluntary — or be cancelled altogether. Companies would no longer have to take this action to tackle climate change. 

2. Slashing CSDDD is slashing Workers’ Rights 

CSDDD would make companies responsible for encouraging their suppliers to pay a living wage and recognising trade unions. This applies to all their suppliers, not just those who they buy from directly. For instance, both workers in a clothes factory and any outsourced workers who make the clothes even if they are employed “informally.” This is important for protecting workers especially because workers employed informally are more vulnerable to exploitation.  

Omnibus proposes cutting this so the rules would only apply to the suppliers who the company buys directly from. Omnibus would limit the obligation to identify and address risks to direct business partners only, unless "plausible information" suggests that risks have indeed arisen or may arise at the level of an indirect business partner. Most human rights abuses and workers’ abuses happen further down the supply chain and would therefore be left out of this important provision.  

Working together to keep CSDDD and prioritise the planet and people